Reality
by the-speed-reader
Summary: He remembers dark hair, dark eyes, and olive-colored skin; his mind flashes to a brilliant laugh, white teeth, and the feeling of her lips against his.


_This is as confusing as hell and I am literately screaming at myself, wondering how in the hell my twisted mind came up with this._

_...Enjoy!_

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"_Forbidden to remember, terrified to forget; it was a hard line to walk_." -Stephenie Meyer

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She dies in a hail of blood and tears and all living things from hell that God let roam on this Earth, in a storm that she resisted against until the very end.

And she died in his arms, eyes screaming for help as her fingers were pressed deeply into the three bullet holes that had entered her stomach in a surprise attack. He had held her tightly and screamed, tore into the sound barrier with every fiber of his being, begging someoneq, anyone, to help her, to save her –

But no one did, and after an agonizing nine minutes, she went limp in his arms, his screams growing hoarse as a voice came through the com. in his ear, yelling for him to tell the older man where they were.

His vision had become blurry, but he blamed it on the rain pounding down around them; he screamed and screamed and screamed until he lost a voice, until he couldn't stand it anymore, until he was covered in her blood, her innocent blood.

And he screamed until the lights went out and he awakes in a gasp, eyes flashing open with every intention of hitting the next person to wake him up; but instead of an enemy, instead of anyone he knows, he finds a faintly familiar figure standing beside him, arms crossed.

He can still feel the tears leaking from his eyes, but cannot bring himself to wipe them off; his heart is pounding, beating with every sense as his mind flashed to the bullets entering her body, again and again, as enemies stood aside and watched –

"Agent!"

The voice came in a harsh command and he froze, hands flying from his throat; he was trying to _kill _himself, to choke himself to death – who was that woman in his dreams?

"Agent!"

This time harsh hands come with the order, pushing his fingers away from him, pinning his hands to his side. He struggles, but there have to be at least three or four people holding him down. After a moment he calms, his chest still heaving in a pain he could not see, his heart still beating in the pattern of a woman he did not know.

His vision comes into focus, and he realizes that the person settled beside his bed is speaking. "–an error came up, something went _very _wrong with your training simulation. Agent, what happened in there?" The man's eyes – eye, he had an eye patch over one – were trained into him, awaiting an answer.

With a harsh swallow quickly taking away the harsh memory, he closes his eyes for a brief second. He is Agent-In-Training Grant Ward, his supervising officer is Agent John Garrett, and he attends the S.H.I.E.L.D academy for undercover operatives. There's isn't a dead girl in his arms, he doesn't know her, _she wasn't real_.

He responds, voice cleared as a small piece of his confidence was restored. "I do not know, sir," he lies easily, unable to wipe away the piece in the back of his mind that is telling him that he is lying to the director. "I – I don't remember much. Only a dark alley, maybe a few shots?"

The man's eyes bore into him for a few seconds, but when he doesn't crack, the director grunts and makes to stand up. "Okay, rookie," the man says, and a piece of his chest pings (why?) as the director exits the room, leaving with a brief, "You'll be cleared in a few days. Until then, rest."

And the man is gone, along with the agents previously holding him down; he is alone, save for the slight beeping of the machines alongside him.

_Who was she_?

He remembers dark hair, dark eyes, and olive-colored skin; his mind flashes to a brilliant laugh, white teeth, and the feeling of her lips against his. He feels like he knew her, like the woman who got shot to death in his arms was his friend, his lover – but that was impossible. It was just a training simulation, he forces himself to believe. She wasn't real; she wasn't and she never would be.

The first few nights out of the infirmary held nightmares of her screams, of her being shot, of her dying. It's difficult to pass through but eventually he does, seeking therapy for the first time in his life to get rid of a non-existent girl that takes over his mind.

But eventually, he does forget – only the occasional whisper of nightmares or dreams brings her back, begging for him to save her.

That is, until he recruited by a high level Agent named Coulson and is forced onto a team of armatures. That is, until one of those armatures, one _he _recruits, turns out to be the girl who died in his arms not a decade ago, one who he passed off as a made up piece of his mind.

He swallows hard when he first sees her, forcing himself to remain calm. But those bright eyes and clever smile eventually force him to relapse, and later the night she was recruited, he remains as stoic as ever until locked up into his bunk.

And then he sobs like he did when her blood spilled over his fingertips, when those three shots had fired blindly into the darkness, hitting her with every intent of hitting him; he remembers more that night than he ever had, more about her, more about everything – he has visions, he calls them, of the two of them pressed tightly together on a couch, his lips roaming to hers. And another of him comforting her after she had nearly drunk herself to death after finding out a deadly secret; they all spilled out, forcing him into a deep depression for that one night.

He forces himself not to look at her; that turns out to be rather difficult when Coulson assigns him to train the ghost of his nightmares, the person he couldn't save – but he trains her harder than ever, remains as stoic as ever, forcing her to focus and _not to get killed_. He swore to himself that he wouldn't let the real life (if this wasn't a long, torturous dream) version of the girl die, drowning in his arms. _He wouldn't_.

So when she gets shot by Ian Quinn, a man with sharp eyes and a cruel smile – so opposite to hers – it feels good to sneak in a crunch his nose inward like a piece of stone.

She heals eventually; and he cannot longer tell the difference between reality and dreams, as they become closely woven together. Some nights she dies, others she doesn't – but every night she ends up in his arms, kissing the hell out of him; or bleeding to death.

Their first kiss (their first real one, at least) is after a rather tough mission, when it was his turn to be shot, to be the one whose life was dangling by a thread on that operating team. When he is unconscious, he dreams of her – but these are happy dreams, with him holding his arms around her waist as a little baby swings in his arms, a girl with his eyes and her smile. He dreams of a life with no death, only life; he dreams of a life where they grow old together, where she finds her family, where his brother doesn't die.

When he wakes, she's there curled up beside him with her nose pressed to his hip, holding him as if he would be yanked from her arms. And he raises a hesitant finger to the top of her head, brushing a strand of hair with the air of being afraid that she wasn't _real_.

But he touches a soft strand and his heart races, once again. And she wakes, seconds before he leans down and presses a kiss to her lips that reshapes his reality.

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_If any part of that was confusing, just PM me and I'll explain._


End file.
